Why I am in a Fijian Health Clinic, Part 1

Note: This post along with the next two were written Thursday afternoon, July 16. I was unable to post then.

I am spending my afternoon in a Fijian health clinic.

They clearly do not have HIPAA. I am sitting next to the medical records, stored in half-closed drawers here in the waiting room. My doctor informed me that the patient who came in before me had the same first name as me, spelled the same, and then let me see her full name-- her last name was coincidentally topically similar to my last name. I'm not going to tell you what her name was, because HIPAA confidentiality is deeply ingrained in me. Plus, this is the internet.

Explaining to you the history behind why I am here may take more than one post. (But let me cut to the chase and avoid worrying anyone by telling you I basically have a bad cough, and I brought a student who had a follow up appointment for a mild sprain. No worries.)

Last Thursday I had a sore throat. Earlier that week my voice had started to become a little husky, but in a way I enjoyed, that gave a nice sultry edge to my singing voice. Thursday it started to feel like getting sick.

That day I learned that on Friday, I was being sent on an adventure errand-- to pick up a late-arriving student from the airport in Nadi and deliver her to our far off island base in the village of Somosomo, on a small island in the Yasawas, and then return back to the base that evening. This involved being on a boat all day long. Great for the soul, but as it turns out, not great for the respiratory system.

Since I was already under the weather on Thursday evening and had to be up early to get to the airport, I got a ride from one of our vans into town on Thursday evening so I could spend the night at the apartment where the program managers live. The van also was driving some other folks into town, and also ended up making an emergency stop to pick up a student from one of our traveling trips to take her to the hospital emergency room. (She turned out to be ok, but it was a harrowing ride.)

So, I got to sleep in the apartment, in a room to myself, which I hadn't done in ages. This experience was divine. Before bed, though, I discovered that my computer charger seemed to have been chewed through and no longer charges my computer.

I am mentioning all this not to complain but to explain to you, dear reader, what is normal here and how many different things pop up in the course of a single day when I think I'm doing something pretty straight-forward. Most everything ends up being somehow rather action-packed and riddled with obstacles to be overcome.

Next morning, I was driven to the airport to pick up the student and we headed straight to Denerau, the port city nearest the Yasawas. (I later learned Denerau is the place I am most likely to find a replacement Mac charger, though I didn't learn that until afterward). We got our boat tickets and some croissants -- I can't even tell you how much I relished these croissants -- just in time to board the flyer (this is what the boat is called).

"Yasawa Flyer Ferry" by Isderion - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 de via Wikimedia Commons.

The flyer is sort of like an express train in the water, which makes the journey north along the Yasawas and back to Denerau over the course of a day. It doesn't pull into any other ports, but instead, little tiny rescue-type boats zip out to taxi passengers from the flyer to the nearest shore or resort.

I would be getting dropped off in Somosomo on its way north, and it would pick me up again on the way back south.  We left the port at around 9AM, and it took until 2:30PM to reach our destination (I believe it was 2 hours late). As we rode the flyer, I was giving and getting frequent phone calls with the Fijian guy who runs the island base, updating him on our location so he would be ready to meet us on a little taxi-boat when we reached the nearest spot to their shore. All afternoon, I was communicating on a cell phone from a windy boat with someone with a Fijian accent, sharing details about the location of my boat (when I'm not fully and completely sure of my location), and trying to get the very quiet Chinese girl I was escorting, who looked maybe like she was feeling sea sick but insisted she was fine, to chat with me.

At one point, someone else from the island base called my phone and explained to me that we had already passed our destination, though I was quite certain that wasn't true. It wasn't, and we met our boat taxi successfully.

We pulled into the base shore with very messy hair and big appetites.

Continued in next post, PART 2...